Assange on Climategate

Jeff Id links to a YouTube video of WikiLeaks’ Assange making a variety of untrue or inflated claims about Climategate and WikiLeaks’ role.

Assange falsely claimed that the Climategate emails were broken by WikiLeaks. This is obviously untrue as CA readers know. I can date WikiLeaks’ entry by contemporary comments. The first notice of the emails at WikiLeaks was 2009/11/21 at 2.50 AM Eastern (12:50 AM blog time). The emails had been downloaded by many people (including me) from a Russian server on Nov 19 and had been downloaded by WUWT moderators on Nov 17. A contemporary comment in a CA thread says that WikiLeaks was down and refers people to megauploads. WikiLeaks has not even been a major reference for Climategate – that belongs to eastangliaemails.com (originally anelegantchaos.org) which was up on Nov 20 and provided a searchable database.

Assange adopted Gavin Schmidt’s disinformation about the “trick… to hide the decline”. While the term “trick” can be used to denote a sophisticated mathematical method, it can also denote something as simple and unscrupulous as deleting adverse data. It is necessary to investigate the facts of the matter and the context. In the example of interest, the Climategate correspondents did not use a sophisticated mathematical method; they simply deleted data that didn’t accord with their expectations. The “investigations” ought to have denounced/renounced such methods and their failure to do so is to their shame.

Given the remarkable lack of speculation about foreign intelligence services hacking into the present WikiLeaks dossier, Assange made some remarkably unsubstantiated fantasies about Russian intelligence, that are almost wild enough for Raymond Pierrehumbert whose similar fantasies were reported on by the NY Times last year.

Assange asserted that UK newspapers had close involvement with UK intelligence, that he had supposedly been told by UK reporters that they had received the dossier from the FSB (presumably FSB, the Russian intelligence) just three days before the Copenhagen conference. Assange then proclaimed that the UK intelligence tried to “frame us as a conduit for the FSB – absolutely outrageous”.

The dates of the Copenhagen conference were Dec 7 to 18, 2009 (see here for example). Gertting the Climategate emails three days before Copenhagen (Dec 4,2009) was hardly a scoop. By that time, even Jon Stewart had done a comedy segment and Minnesotans for Global Warming had issued the Hide the Decline video.

Assange’s lieutenant then observed that the UEA had observed that the Climategate dossier had been selected and that statements had been taken out of context and that the university had promised to “publish the rest of the material to correct the full picture.” In fact, as CA readers know, Acton of the UEA intervened to prevent the panel charged with examining the rest of the material from doing so and the rest of the material remains unexamined and unavailable.

What a pair of blowhards. They were obviously unnerved by the question. They evidently like leaks that embarrass their political opponents, but in this case they found themselves tagged with a leak that had damaged the side they like; and since it seems to be more about political warfare against governments they dislike than some impartial ideal of transparency and freedom of information, they were stuck scrambling to make up a story about how it really served some nobler purpose. Of course they should simply have said that they weren’t the source of the leak, that it was in full circulation long before anyone looked to them for a copy and they didn’t know much about the details of what followed. But that would have been too humble, especially in front of a room full of simpering hero-worshippers. So they pretended to be insiders and proceeded to deliver a few minutes of sheer drivel.

While I was in the UK last fall, there was brief interest by the UK tabloids in the Russian angle, and an article appeared in the Daily Mail speculating that Russian intelligence officials had hacked the UEA and stolen the emails. But nobody took that line seriously and the story died within 48 hours. If Assange has a shred of evidence to support his lunatic theory he should release it. What’s with these secret communications between him and UK intelligence: out with it, Mr Wikileaks! Bloody poser.

On this issue at least they are nothing but fakes and cretins. Saying that UEA released all the background emails and whatnot to provide the full context is beyond idiocy; and Assange’s discussion of the “trick” is just painful to watch.

What a pair of blowhards. They were obviously unnerved by the question. They evidently like leaks that embarrass their political opponents, but in this case they found themselves tagged with a leak that had damaged the side they like; and since it seems to be more about political warfare against governments they dislike than some impartial ideal of transparency and freedom of information, they were stuck scrambling to make up a story about how it really served some nobler purpose. Of course they should simply have said that they weren’t the source of the leak, that it was in full circulation long before anyone looked to them for a copy and they didn’t know much about the details of what followed. But that would have been too humble, especially in front of a room full of simpering hero-worshippers. So they pretended to be insiders and proceeded to deliver a few minutes of sheer drivel.

While I was in the UK last fall, there was brief interest by the UK tabloids in the Russian angle, and an article appeared in the Daily Mail speculating that Russian intelligence officials had hacked the UEA and stolen the emails. But nobody took that line seriously and the story died within 48 hours. If Assange has a shred of evidence to support his lunatic theory he should release it. What’s with these secret communications between him and UK intelligence: out with it, Mr Wikileaks! Bloody poser.

On this issue at least they are nothing but fakes and cretins. Saying that UEA released all the background emails and whatnot to provide the full context is beyond idiocy; and Assange’s discussion of the “trick” is just painful to watch.

In general, I am for all things that make public decision making more transparent so I must admit that I am for almost all leakers and those that publicize the leaking information – without putting their own spin on it which is most often obvious from knowing the publisher’s politics. What the thinking person remembers in these instances is that some publishers will play definite favorites in selecting what leaks get publicized and how they attempt to spin it. The NYT is famous for spinning leaks and Washington Post to a lesser extent. This is not to say that there is not spin from the right also.

I think even with the spin it is possible to extract the “correct” information both about the leaked and the spinner. A prime example is the handling of the hide the decline email statement and its intent. Early on the scientists involved came up with a spin whereby a trick (without reference to hide the decline) became a rather common term for some legitimate science maneuver. When that spin was picked up, almost verbatim by the defenders of the consensus in sheep’s clothing, it did not require a Sherlock Holmes to see what was transpiring.

The top environment article (i.e the most-read) on the UK Independent newspaper’s website is one written 10 years ago. In it, snip David Viner of CRU solemnly informed us that the last few mild winters in eastern England proved that global warming was here.

“Within a few years”, claimed some twit from CRU, “winter snowfall will become ‘a very rare and exciting event’. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

Weather is climate when it supports AGW, but when we’re freezing our asses off then it’s just weather.

I find myself on the exact opposite side of this argument. The leak of classified data puts lives at risks, interferes with international relationship and is a clear crime (regardless of how the information was obtained). The climategate material is all information that should have been available in the public domain (all subject to FOIA), sheds light on an important public policy debate and advances the state of science.

Its baffling how the NYT can see Climategate as a crime but see wikileaks as a noble exercise in open government.

Thanks for saying this. Gwyn Prins made much the same points on BBC radio’s The Moral Maze a few weeks ago, after the earlier WikiLeaks release of secret US communications from Afghanistan and Iraq. Michael Portillo (ex Conservative cabinet minister) asked Prins about Climategate and how it compared. He was all for release of the Climategate files but argued passionately that because we grant governments the right to use violence in our defence the ‘normal rules’ of openness do not and cannot apply. In fact such leaks are treason. I’m unclear how much diplomatic communications would come under the same rule, even in Professor Prins world. But it was good to hear the point strongly argued.

As further evidence for how self-aggrandizing wikileak’s founder is, consider the source of the data. Many reports link the data to a 22 year old Army private in Iraq who walked out with the 250,000 documents burned onto a “music” CD. This hardly represents skill as a hacker in cracking a top secret government system. Of course Assange wants to link both climategate and the wikileak data to a powerful supragovernment hacking force headed by him, but in both cases the source of the data will likely to be found to be a disgruntled insider.

This article in the DT puzzled me, now have the explanation, straight forward false claim?

“WikiLeaks release: Timeline of the key WikiLeaks revelations”
By Jon Swaine in New York 6:53PM GMT 22 Nov 2010

“November 2009: Climategate emails”

“More than 1,000 emails sent between staff at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit appeared to show that scientists distorted research to boost their argument that global warming was man-made, causing an international media storm.”

A review of the reviewers: SM, you, when you want to be, can be the king of incisive wit, but by-and-large you are SO faithful to scientific truth and understatement. RM, your style is forceful indeed. I do appreciate your tell-it-like-it-is manner, while at the same time exhibiting total probity to the facts. It’s a treat to find you both at this site.

For what it’s worth, a Russian proverb: “Whether the stone hits the pitcher, or the pitcher the stone, it is the pitcher that is the worse for it.” Or another Russian proverb: “What good is it to have the bear in the cage if you are in the cage with the bear?”

Assange has simply been a conduit for some of the leaks publicized of late and not the insider doing the leaking. His spin on Climategate was most pathetic. The question would become whether the leaks of the diplomatic “secrets” would have been publicized without Assange.

I would hope, however, that we could discuss these leaks without getting too much into the personalities involved. When people throw out statements that this information puts people’s lives at risk, I am wondering specifically to whom is this happening. The other dilemmas presented by the secrecy and the eventual revealed information held in secret are:

1. How do we know what is the limit of the secrecy and for what purposes is it being used?

2. If we are not much surprised by these revelations ( I was not) then what is the purpose of keeping them secret. On the other hand, if these are major surprises then how, particularly in a democracy, do the constituents evaluate governments activities about which we know nothing or little.

3. The defense of secrecy in that it saves lives could be turned on its head and we can ask how much secrecy can be invoked by the saving lives defense.

Your no. 2. It is sometimes very important that diplomats be able to communicate frankly and privately with each other. Following this, it is doubtful if a foreign diplomat, secretary of state, etc. will think it wise to communicate his or her frank opinion on a matter, which may be very important, to a counterpart in another country. Certainly not to a US individual. Of course if this is the case then it is quite frankly unbelievable that this kind of thing, whether it surprises us or not, was put on a website to which over a million individuals, including this soldier, had access. This is another instance of appalling government incompetence.

It would be instructive if you could provide some of these instances were a diplomat must be able to say and get answers that would be unacceptable if heard by the general public.

Now I suppose if diplomats were working for a state controlled society this would be case or a society were the constituents have given over their capability to decide what is or is not proper in these dealings.

It is rather obvious that what is involved here is the ability of governments to say one thing in public and another in secrecy and the embarrassment that pursues from a leak. Would it be so bad if a government was to forced to negotiate based on its public pronouncements?

Kenneth, at the risk of being OT, you might start with the book, Charlie Wilson’s War, or a careful analysis of the U.S. – Saudi relationship and how little we really know about it, or how about the planning of the 1973 war against Israel or the planning for D day.

In the 1970s, I worked with someone who had been in the mineral survey business. One of the projects had been in aerial survey’s for minerals in Guyana. Guyana is a country adjacent to Venezuela. While analyzing some of their aerial photographs, they noticed something odd. It was an Venezuelan army base deep inside Guyanese territory. I think that he told me that this area is where the oil was.

They didn’t know what to do with this information. They knew they couldn’t make it public and risk causing a war with Guyana’s much larger neighbor. So, being Canadian nationals, they took the images to the Canadian ambassador. He thanked them and told them he would take care of it.

Now they had information that if carelessly handled could cayuse significant destruction and loss of life. They handled it discreetly. To me this is much better that racing through Georgetown Guyana to find the New York Times stringer so that they could have their faces on the front page.

He also worked in Chad which is a neighbor of Libya. He had stories of being plied with free drinks by a well known Libyan agent who had many questions of what mineral deposits they were finding in Chad.

FWIW, back when it first broke I also tried to send links and a copy of at least some of the files that I had downloaded to Wikileaks. No response and nothing ever appeared on their site. They weren’t, at that stage, apparently interested.

Intelligence operation is my guess too. But whose? The ridiculous spin on Climategate gives some valuable clues. It’s also interesting, as Mark F mentioned above, how the term ‘wiki’ has been co-opted twice. At least Wikipedia is recognisably a wiki – its problems with climate science being a matter of the wrong people being (planted and?) entrusted with high levels of admin rights. How have things been there since Connolley was reported to have had his editor’s pen broken? (Honest question, though OT here no doubt.)

But if for some hidden forces Wikipedia was an attempt to slant all authoritative ‘encyclopedic’ material in a particular direction, WikiLeaks could be the same idea, to take ownership of and thus slant all so-called whistleblowing activity, downplaying the stuff that exposes and goes against the big plan. This is the significance to me of Assange’s apparent ‘authority’ on Climategate. He’s been told by those running him to try and own it. That’s the game but it’s a bit fatuous by now. I suppose though the Guardian and NYT are being rewarded for playing ball (largely) on Climategate by having early access to this stuff, which is valuable to them revenue and eyeballs-wise, like it or not.

I thought that was fair comment. But when someone this much in the public eye – is Assange in the top ten in the world right now? – says something this wrong about something so important that is completely outside his expertise it does invite suspicion. Ross hedged his bets between fake and cretin. I hold all theories about the relative proportions lightly. I wasn’t thinking CIA or Mossad, in fact those famous brands often seem beside the point. But the phrase ‘intelligence operation’ did resonate. If my instinct was right, someone unknown was behind Assange’s extremely unhelpful input on Climategate. But maybe he just reads the Guardian eco-pages too much, then individual hubris took him over the top on the spur of the moment.

It hardly seems adequate to the claims made though. It’s very odd.

The abuse of the wiki label really bothers me but that can be considered separately. It’s a wonderful idea and it has, in Wikipedia, blessed the human race more than anyone could have imagined when Ward Cunningham released his little web system in 1995, based on just 200 lines of Perl, and invited his favourites among the world’s top software thinkers to take a look. Just in case the good story is lost in the more recent grime.

yes, the first for the people, not for governments- thats the basic intention of wikileaks. WL has no “political enemies”. Because WL is not political at all.

The clear political/ideological enemy mindsets are to find in the professional climate “”sceptics”” PR-arena…fear mongering against the “evil environmentalist”…no, not evil..just wrong is one of the slogans i remember..

Anyway:

A: There was exactly nothing in the emails that would or could change the facts of global warming or climate science in general. Only on “fox news”&co. Pure pseudo scandal only planned to smear climate-science and backed by the hysterical and superficial media.

B: WikiLeaks is usually and by definition not interested in stuff that is already known and out there. And by the way no one cares if these private mails came from WL or somewhere else from “a russian server”.

C: That you guys claim that WL somehow have “stolen your story” sounds jealous, so for me just another evidence that 1)the mails came somewhere out of your climate disinfo-agenda. Then someone (maybe..) used WL name to push the ridiculous PR-attack on climate science. 2) That you guys are not interested in the factual reality, or in solving problems- you just ideologically look for “enemies”. I call that frog-instincts. You choose the easy way, playing devil’s advocate, against reason, against science and against our life support system. well funded by the most powerful and destructive industries in human history. The fossil fuel cartels.

D: “Climategate” is nothing but evil PR to confuse the masses. And everyone with an iq above room temperature who is able to take a reasonable look at “both sides”, will definitely find that out.

i know that the cru mails are real cru-mails, what i tried to say with it was that the whole “climategate” event, as an event came out of the climate- “skeptics” scene (aka the fossil fuel and right-wing ‘free’ market Meh scene). Not from concerned whistleblowers or ethical hackers.

My point is that the WikiLeaks concept got abused to get a bigger impact. (to discredit the science just before cop15)
Probably the source suggested to wikileaks that there were the mega-conspiracy to reveal, but there wasnt. Only hot air. Thats all not really the wikileaks´style.

Unless you have some evidence regarding “fossil fuel and right-wing ‘free’ market Meh scene” having anything to do with the release of the emails, you’re engaging in gratuitous speculation, which can be just as gratuitously dismissed.

“the whole “climategate” event, as an event came out of the climate- “skeptics” scene (aka the fossil fuel…” I believe this is rooted in our friend Rajendra Pachauri’s words from a bit over a year ago: “Pachauri, speaking to The Times on Saturday…suggested that the fossil fuel lobby could be behind a hacking incident last month that led to the publication of thousands of leaked e-mails…” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6938298.ece

pachauri is an awesome man and great leader of the ipcc – but i dont have that from him. Its common sense. There are quite immoral interests and its simply distinctive that the “”skeptics”” continously ignore that.

By the way could be interesting:
Pachauri Debunks Myths Of IPCC “Monstrous-Bureaucracy”

Any competent cross examining lawyer would obliterate that assertion in the absence of supporting evidence. Wouldn’t it be more effective to present direct irrefutable proof that big industries paid skeptic scientists and people like Steve to fabricate false assessments & science papers, rather than offer unsupported guilt-by-association accusations?

High Court Judge K. Ramamoorthy ruled that 3 officers of the Governing Council, one of whom was Pauchari, had “suppressed material facts and they have sworn to false affidavits.”

In his conclusion, the judge said “And I am afraid, that the affairs and the efficient management of the Centre are not safe in the hands of officers like … Dr R K Pachauri … [other names redacted] and they had ignored that the officers have to function as a public functionaries within the parameters of the Constitution.”

Yet, one year after this somewhat damning judgement, Pachauri was elected as co-chair of the IPCC.

It’s strange that you see Pachauri as a wonderful man, and Steve McIntyre and colleagues as immoral agents of the fossil fuel industry – no-one’s provided any evidence that Steve Mc is anything other than what he says he is, and meanwhile Pachauri’s dishonesty is on record (a more recent example being his denial to the Times of London of any knowledge of complaints concerning the IPCC AR4’s ‘2035’ glacier claim, a claim contradicted by Dr. Begala, who had informed him, and who later confronted Pachauri within an interview with this fact, which Pachauri did not then deny).

According to the Guardian (i.e. ?), InterPlod are after Assange. (article here). Perhaps Assange can organize an independent inquiry of exoneration (Oxburgh and Russel are available), all he has to do is provide the evidence to be assessed, legal guidance, and forbid discussion of key accusations, and he’ll be fine).

It seems Assange has let fame go to his head. Or guilt. WHile he tries to rationalize the current crop of leaked documents (nothing more than airing underwear in public), I guess now he wants to be the sole source of any leaks.

Im almost convinced Mr Assange is nothing but a salaried hack of either the UK or USA – operating under the guise of “honesty”

Im not one for conspiracies, they do my head in..but Mr Assange just isnt stacking up.

How on earth can a man claim one minute to be monitored/spied on by different govt intelligence agencies — who allegedly want to “disappear him”, and the next appear on BBC with a hole in his sock? for all to see?

The BBC is nothing but govt controlled rubbish that the respective ruling party of Great Britain tells what to do, how where and when.

The BBC since formation has been, and always will be a state “asset”.

How can Mr Assange pre-book appearances at buildings in London(literally minutes from MI5-6 HQ) and still claim that Intelligence officers are “out to get him”?

Surely, if that was the case, with the co-operation between UK/USA – which is so tight its known to have lead to muslims being jacked on the side of the street in broad daylight by a combination of both British and American “operatives” – in light of this, how is it possible for Mr Assange to sit in a hall/centre and give speeches? and give follow-up Q&A sessions after to media/journalists/students/anyone of the hundred+ people who attend?

And on top of all this, the “leaks” always just happen to be favourable to the US/UK in regard Iran/Syria/others.

The last lot, regarding Afghanistan was so laced with claims about Iranian interference, I began to wonder whether or not it was merely a log dedicated to pre-war propaganda against the Iranians.

You will notice the logs didnt include various “claims” or any “proof” against UK/US/Nato forces financially backing the group responsible for the attacks/terrorism inside Iran – which its guaranteed they contained – including one “leader” of the group who now resides in the U.K. and oddly is living quite a wealthy existence.

If Wikileaks purpose really is supposed to reveal U.S./U.K./Western hypocrisy, its certainly failing to do so; it could be argued its complimenting their efforts wonderfully.

the information you suggest would be available on the network about paying insurgents or internal dissidents in Iran would be a higher classification than Secret. Apparently all the docs released were classified Secret and not for foreign eyes. At this point in time I don’t believe Secret is really that high of a classification comparatively. Thinking about what is released compared to all the things that are happening would seem to support this. There has been nothing about how we accessed internal Iranian information on their nuclear program either.

I agree only with your last sentence. The leaks do significant damage to US foreign policy and prestige. Perhaps the most damaging information concerned the leader of Yemen who was covering for the US by taking responsibility for aerial bombings of al Qaeda hideways and camps in Yemen. He may now be a target.

Furthermore, it goes without saying that there is going to be much self-serving material in the documents. They are US documents written from a pro-American point of view mostly by Americans.

I think the idea that Assange is somehow being controlled by intelligence services is silly.

Here’s a link that takes a more expansive view of what the leaks mean:

According to the interview, “A ‘wiki’ is a website that lets Web users edit and create linked pages. WikiLeads has strayed from that definition, as it can be edited only by WikiLeaks employees.”

The interview does not mention Assange’s Climategate claims, but with reference to the diplomatic leaks, it reports that “On Thursday and Friday, Sanger wrote a series of Tweets saying that WikiLeaks is an enemy of the U.S. and should be dealt with accordingly.”

Thanks for this Hu – hadn’t picked up Sanger’s very interesting comments. (For those interested in the history, Larry Sanger was recommended the wiki idea for the online encyclopedia he was trying to build for Jimmy Wales by Ben Kovitz, who’d been active with many of us on Ward Cunningham’s original. Sanger was key to getting Wikipedia off the ground and deserves great credit for that. His is one of three names that should be better known.)

I think Sanger’s comments about what a Wiki is are not strictly accurate, however – though they are probably fair comment, given how Assange is abusing the goodwill attached to the term in the common mind because of Wikipedia. To take the most important extreme example, a TiddlyWiki (not difficult to google) is definitely a wiki but until recently has mostly been edited by one person for that person. I speak from delighted experience. Jeremy Ruston, the inventor, is a fifth member of any wiki hall of fame for me. But the experts no doubt disagree.

FWIW, Jeff Id reports over on tAV that the video was made July 8, 2010.

Steve: hmmm, just before the Afghanistan leaks. Salon sees here that the leaks were distributed to selected papers three weeks earlier, allowing them 3 weeks or so to analyze. So this would presumably be in response to that.

Neil Wallis’s participation in UEA’s response to Climategate raises anew questions about Assange’s odd claim that Wikileaks had something to do with the leak.

We’re still in the dark as to what really happened, but here’s a hypothesis consistent with the facts (I think):

A UEA insider — perhaps an IT person who had a scientific background and Wikileaks contacts but was not in the climate science clique — was inspired by blog controversy and Wikileak successes to leak the e-mails via Wikileaks. However, the Wikileaks server happened to be down at the time he or she was ready to leak, and hence the leaker resorted instead to an insecure Russian server plus a tip on RC (unsuccessful) and then tAV (successful).

Assange could thus take some valid credit for inspiring the leak, even if his organization in fact had no hand in its actual implementation.

UEA then hired Wallis to spin the leak as an outside hack, perhaps by Russian intelligence agents, in order to distract attention away from CRU’s anti-scientific efforts to keep its data secret.

The following article is a dig-here in light of recent events: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/04/climate-change-email-hacking-leaks and I suggest that people re-read it very carefully. The hatchet-job on Paul Dennis seemed inexplicable at the time. “University sources” are referred to but not identified. Can one reasonably wonder whether Neil Wallis was involved in planting this article with The Guardian? Sure seems like a possibility worth investigating.

The article has a potential connection to Wikileaks as well. Most people who have written on climategate write more than one article. However, to my knowledge, this was David Leigh’s one and only venture into the climategate fray. Now google “david leigh unsung hero” and he connects to the Wikileaks story. Is it anything other than coincidence? Dunno. A dig-here.

There are other even more interesting aspects to the article, which needs to be parsed paragraph-by-paragraph in light of the suspected Neil Wallis involvement.

Well worth returning to. The hypothesis doesn’t ring true for me though, in that anyone already able to hack into and take control of RealClimate then link to the zip file on a Russian (or any other) server from various sceptic blogs has no need of WikiLeaks.

The attack on Paul Dennis is a different thing – and the singular use of David Leigh as a conduit. Well worth hypothesizing, at every level.

[…] it was an inside job. Julian Assange timelines don’t seem to agree. Steve McIntyre on Climateaudit.org says that people were downloading the files from the Russian server two days before the Climategate […]

[…] be the wrong move. One of the people who isn’t afraid to go intellectually up against Assange is Steve McIntyre, one of the pioneering climate skeptics, who rebuts the Wikileak’s founder’s claim that he […]